


Lovely, made from love

by userkant



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Copious references to honey and sweet things but don’t @ me harry styles did it first, Established Relationship, I suppose, Infertility, M/M, Mpreg, actually it’s all about wanting to be pregnant but not being able to, i imagine this to be fairly, just in case, one line of reference to internalised homophobia, sex mention, so im gonna tag, there’s no pregnancy in this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-23 21:46:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18558502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/userkant/pseuds/userkant
Summary: Harry imagines what his and Louis’ child will be like.





	Lovely, made from love

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from “Isn’t She Lovely” by Stevie Wonder, which felt perfect to a cosmic degree for my first work in this fandom.

Sometimes, it feels like the greatest injustice in the world, that he is not permitted _this_.

  
He doesn’t often tell Louis this; no, these thoughts are reserved for when he lies at night — usually with Louis’ quiet breaths nosing into his neck, hand resting on Harry’s too-flat stomach — and he can’t help but rage at the world, just a little, that he will never be given this chance. These churning thoughts always, eventually, take the same structure, like a road well-travelled to his own demise. This is where it always starts: the endless possibilities of his and Louis’ life matter intertwining.

 

This is what Louis loves to go on about; what he is always throwing into conversation at completely random times, or bringing up when they are sitting in silence, doing the mundane, and always making Harry start a laugh before he relaxes back into basking in Louis’ happiness, content just to listen. And he likes to hear it, he _does_. He could listen to Louis talk about anything all day, really; it’s not just the infectious, radiant happiness that lights up Louis’ face that he loves about those moments when they cocoon in the world that contains only themselves, and discuss _it_.

 

No, sometimes he _does_ catch himself imagining their child, a perfect blend of Louis-Harry, staring up at him though his own green eyes hooded by Louis’ sweet eyelashes, or opening Harry’s lips with Louis’ honey-honey voice. He imagines their child running around, gangly like his limbs will probably always remain, but with Louis’ energy, multiplied a hundredfold by the youth of childhood. He imagines a head of golden-brown curls, too-large hands supported by delicate wrists, and even the genetics of his spots marring golden skin.

 

He gets lost for a second in thinking how their child would sing — and they would, undoubtedly, with genes like theirs, even if he _is_ adamant about never forcing their child into their shared career, talent or no. He wonders about their voice, too — their accent, even; would they pick up Louis’ sharp, northern tones like his own are starting to adapt to, or tend towards his own slower, rounded ones? Would they grow up with both, slip into either at will?

 

Sometimes he wonders, too, what it would be like — a little miniature Harry (though with sprinklings of Louis’ character, always, because any child brought up by Louis Tomlinson will undoubtedly be imbued with his sunlight). Louis loves joking about this the most, pinching Harry’s dimpling cheeks as he does — _well, are you_ sure _, Hazza? Two little yous might be a little_ too _cheeky for the world to handle_. It would feel surreal, he thinks, for his child to have his own likeness, his essence, and yet know that Louis helped to create a new version of him.

  
  
But always, _always_ , when it’s the darkest outside, when his insecurity swells up despite Louis’ solid, comforting presence behind him, when it seems as if his is the only mind still awake, _that’s_ when it seems like there can be no higher use for his body than to use it to grow more of _Louis_.

 

Louis’ strong genes; would he have twins? Would his stomach fill out with twice as much inside, until he would be so overwhelmed with love that he could contain it no longer? Would Louis dote on him even more, snuggle protectively even closer, knowing that he was at once holding three loves in one person?

 

They could have Louis’ hair, their child — have that same silky, soft hair that Harry can never get enough of gently brushing to the side, curling on his fingers at the tips. They could grow up with Louis’ delicate wrists, ankles, for him to kiss when they fall over, soothe when they grow cramped with the day’s exertion, with playing the piano an hour too long. They could inherit Louis’ hands, too — yes, definitely his hands, delicate still despite the enormity of the work they had undertaken, ones talented, and ones that, through all hardship, are capable of loving Harry so sweetly.

 

They would inherit his stature, maybe, would grow up to have the same slight limbature that no amount of gym attendance can truly disguise. Perhaps Louis’ movement, — _is_ this genetic, or something to be inherited simply through association? — how he moves when safe, with Harry or other loved ones, innate fluid mannerisms peeking through despite the warring pull of enforced rigidity. He would want their child to be this full of energy, too, to move through the world so brilliantly, so brightly, at once confident and unquestioning of his place in it.

 

It would be the greatest blessing, too, to have them grow up with even a fraction of Louis’ brilliance, his wild river of a mind, his quick wit and ability to leave Harry breathless with laughter. Yes, that their child could inherit the way Louis’ thoughts strike the world, devastating and formative, and that he could somehow be privy to their development leaves him overwhelmed by the thought of creating such a new life, of carrying a part of Louis inside him, of sealing his love for Louis in the most staunch, undeniable way.

 

At times like these, it feels like these most sacred of gifts, these most precious of blessings, was cruelly snatched from him, and the double-edged sword of reminders of this loss are littered in his every interaction; in Louis’ big family, in the laughing, wild kids that come to their shows, in his friends’ smiles as they ask him, yet again, to become godfather to their newborn.

 

The unfairness of it all flares up again, like a pain he has ignored for too long, left untreated. He knows he’s being selfish, but he allows himself these thoughts, for now; how easy it is for some people, creating a life with their loved one, how his stupid body will never take to seed, no matter how many times they forego the condom, how long Louis stays plugging his release inside him, and how much he wishes it just _would_.

 

He laments how, for some people — _straight_ people, he thinks with derision, the remnants of something ugly, old, internalised, rearing its head — it can come from any act, be formed in no time at all, with thoughtlessness, devoid of months and years of paperwork and money, that this miracle could be unwanted, even, an accident, when he struggles with never being able to have it for himself and Louis, and wants it, sometimes, so much he can barely breathe.

 

How easily, he thinks, others take for granted that their child will be born with their appearance, their mannerisms, their habits and quirks and talents. It’s something that isn’t even a question, usually — like,  _of course_ that’s how it is, how it will be, unless dictated otherwise by some anomaly, some unwanted divergence from the norm, and the option of adopting a child that is not flesh and blood is so  _obviously_ second-rate.

 

It stabs unreasonably, then, his jealousy of all the people who never have to make that choice, for whom it just always _is_ , who never have to hear about the adoption system, the foster system, and feels guilty — and sometimes so, so guilty that he feels sick with it — that he would prefer to selfishly bear his own children as the idealised manifestation of love when there are so many in genuine need.

 

In the darkest corner of his mind he’s jealous, too, _deathly_ jealous of whatever woman will inevitably be allowed to enter their sacred space, of whoever will replace what his own body should be able to do, of whose womb will line their child, whose blood will nourish it, whose half of DNA will be sealed in their child for all eternity. It feels _wrong_ , it feels like a _violation_ , that someone else would have a claim — physical, if not legal, which hurts all the more — to the love that should belong to Harry and Louis alone.

 

He will love any version of his and Louis’ child, he knows that it doesn’t _actually_ matter to him, but is he not allowed to, just once, lament the fact that it will never be fully created by them alone?

 

The swirling thoughts, and the images they conjure — flashes of hair, eyes, skin, limbs, all a beautiful abstraction, a cauldron of his own creation — slowly transform into dreams, a dream where it can be _him_ rounded with Louis’ child, where the small hand still resting on his stomach could be the one soothingly applying stretchmark cream, could be the one massaging his aching stomach after a long, heavy day, and would be the one able to feel the steady kicking, beating, of a life that they had created for the first time, and the second, and always.

 

It is this thought — of Louis taking care of him, always always — that finally draws him under.


End file.
